“Digging in the melancholic approaches of Harmonic Ascendant, Brain Voyager is an opus tinted of an unequalled romanticism”
1 Brain Voyager 5:19
2 Lost Humanity 4:06
3 Frozen Breath of Life 4:26
4 Invisible Danger 6:24
5 Glücksgedanken 5:06
6 Love Symphonie 2:41
7 Slaves of Civilization 5:40
8 The Inside of Feelings 4:30
(CDR 38:02) (V.F.)
(Melodic and ethereal New Berlin School)
BRAIN VOYAGER is a music which accompanies a 3D movie project pulled out from a Ludwig Tieck's novel; Lebens Überfluss. To do it, Robert Schroeder used a technology called Aachen-Art-Head which consists in installing a microphone in the head of a dummy, giving thus a claustrophobic sound endowed of a surprising transparency. The result is surprising! Digging in the melancholic approaches of Harmonic Ascendant, Robert Schroeder delivers an opus tinted of an unequalled romanticism. This album, that the Hi-Fi magazine voted as the best audio reference in 1986, is a pure delight for audiophiles as well as fans of the Aachen's synth wizard.
The title-track opens with a beautiful ballad where an acoustic guitar courts the pensive notes of an elegant piano. We are in full Harmonic Ascendant lands with an approach full of sadness that we listen the eyes riveted on a window by a rainy day. Discreet, the synths add a musical dress just and sober which breathes into Brain Voyager a sad melodious approach which will resurface in Glücksgedanken, that a soft celestial voice caresses of an infinity tenderness. Lost Humanity moves on with keys which collide finely in a heavy reverberating fog. The track is static with an absent rhythm which flows under various corresponding tones. It's an ambient track which wears well its naming. With its chiming chords which ringing such as a devilish lullaby, Frozen Breath of Life is bursting of authenticity. The strings of lead which come to bite this delicate bed song for schizophrenics add a dimension as much nightmarish as musical in a track which brushes the anxiety at its pure state. The heavy, corrosive and incisive strings which tear the bipolar ambiences of the album add a sinister depth to a work which bursts out of an incredible tone fauna. They weave a carousel of fear on Invisible Danger which turns around like a madness mislaid in its labyrinth. The effect is captivating and striking. Love Symphonie is an abstract melody in suspension, quite as the whimsical The Inside of Feelings, while that Slaves of Civilization hides its tune in the acerbic strings' bites of a devilish cello. The ambience is torn between white, especially with the fine melody escaping at mid-point, and black, illustrating the world of paradox which surrounds this Des Lebens Überfluss' story. We are in a full dream and possibly in a head of somebody else.
BRAIN VOYAGER and me! It's an old love story. I always found that this Robert Schroeder's album had a deep romantic approach where are dragging some beautiful melodies marked by nostalgia. If some people think that we are in full New Age, I shall refer to the first works of Vangelis (Sex Power and Fais que ton Rêve soit plus Long que la Nuit). Although the eras are quite different, we find similarities between these works where contradictory feelings are on the lookout for the slightest melodic parcel in order to be hiding within there. Through his sound experimentations, Robert Schroeder has known how to give room to melodious approaches which espouse all the cerebral forms of a brain which looks for itself. Soft, ethereal and oneiric, BRAIN VOYAGER is an inescapable in the career of Schroeder. An album which is still available via his website in an enhance sound technology.
Sylvain Lupari (February 3rd, 2013) *****
Available at Robert Schroeder Music Shop